Could it be that one reason Americans’ faith is so low in their government, its elections, its scientists, and its law enforcement is because it so clearly operates two (if not three) systems of justice?
Florida state police executing a search warrant early Monday morning raided the Tallahassee home of a blonde white woman who captured part of the raid on camera. Police entered, guns drawn, to confiscate a phone and computer belonging to Rebekah Jones, a former state Department of Health data scientist.
“Imagine if the camera wasn’t recording,” Jones tweeted later. “Imagine if I weren’t white.”
Americans don’t have to imagine. That’s the issue. It is the issue that sparked massive protest marches from coast to coast this summer after police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her Louisville home in March. Not on camera. And after police killed George Floyd by suffocation on the streets of Minneapolis in May. On camera. And after police shot and killed Rayshard Brooks in an Atlanta fast-food parking lot in June. On camera.
Those three Americans were all Black. Jones and her white family survived their encounter with law enforcement.
Jones built Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard, but was fired last summer after refusing requests to alter (falsify) the coronavirus positivity rating data to align with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s plans for reopening the state’s economy.
The Washington Post reports that state police were sent to the home Monday to seize electronic devices:
Law enforcement officials allege the scientist, Rebekah Jones, may have also used the devices to hack into a health department website in November and to send an unauthorized message to Florida emergency personnel, urging them to speak out against the state’s pandemic response. She has denied the accusation.
“This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power,” Jones said in a tweet Monday afternoon the raid. In an interview Monday night with CNN’s Chris Cuomo about the circumstances of the raid on her home, Jones again denied the allegation.
Meanwhile, the outgoing president of the United States is reportedly discussing giving pardons “‘like Christmas gifts’ to people who haven’t even asked,” sources tell Axios.
Donald Trump personally has approached Republican state officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan with requests that they overturn certified November election results showing he lost. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) has called Trump’s lawsuits aimed at overturning election results there an “assault on democracy.”
Isn’t what Trump is doing attempting to falsify election results, and isn’t that criminal? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Monday evening. In fact, Trump’s personal efforts to reverse election results are likely federal crimes, said Andrew Weissmann, former lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
What remains in question is whether someone in Trump’s position in this country will ever face prosecution for committing such crimes, Weissmann said.
“Are we a nation where those at the highest levels of this country will be held to account if they commit a federal crime?” Weissmann asked. Which is why, he suggested, it cannot be constitutional for the president to commit crimes for which he then pardons himself.
For three Black Americans this year, petty crimes or no crimes meant extra-judicial killing by police. A low-ranking state employee asked to falsify data faces official harassment for whistleblowing while superiors who asked her to falsify the data suffer no consequences. And the president of the world’s longest functioning democracy conspires to invalidate election results and undermine the will of the people in public violation, perhaps, of several federal laws while supporters agitate for a military coup.
Confidence in this republic lasting much longer seems to be flagging. Wonder why?